Horrell-Higgins Feud

The Horrell and Higgins families were ranchers who settled in Lampasas County before the Civil War and were friends and neighbors until the 1870s. The five Horrell brothers-Mart, Tom, Merritt, Ben, and Sam-first got into trouble with the State Police in 1873, when Capt. Thomas Williams and seven men went to Lampasas to put a stop to the general lawlessness prevalent there. Williams fought with the Horrell boys and their brother-in-law, Bill Bowen, in Jerry Scott's saloon. When the fight was over, four state policemen were dead. Mart Horrell, badly wounded, was confined in the Georgetown jail, but as soon as he was well enough his brothers helped him to break out.

The Horrells remained in the Lampasas area for several more months, gathered a herd of cattle, and then headed for New Mexico. They settled in the Ruidoso country west of Roswell and immediately got into more trouble. Conflicting tales are told about the beginning of the affair known in New Mexico as the Horrell War, but all agree that it was brief and bloody. At least seventeen men were killed, including Ben Horrell and a brother-in-law named Ben Turner.

Eventually, followed for a long distance by the angry New Mexicans, the Horrells returned to Texas. They reached Lampasas near the end of February 1874, surrendered to the authorities, and were tried for the murder of Thomas Williams and acquitted. The brothers resettled in various parts of Lampasas County. Sam lived about seventeen miles north of Lampasas near Simms Creek, Tom had some property about seven miles north of Lampasas, and Mart lived southeast of Lampasas near the Burnet County line.

At some time during the next two years they quarreled with their former neighbor John Pinckney Calhoun (Pink) Higgins, who accused them of stealing his stock. On January 22, 1877, Pink Higgins shot and killed Merritt Horrell in Wiley and Toland's Gem Saloon in Lampasas. Legend claims that this was the same saloon where the four State Police were killed in 1873.

The three remaining Horrells were determined to call to account Higgins, his brother-in-law Bob Mitchell, and his friend Bill Wren. On March 26, as Tom and Mart Horrell were on their way to attend a session of Judge W. A. Blackburn's court, they were waylaid four miles east of Lampasas by the Higgins party, which was concealed along the banks of a creek known today as Battle Branch. Tom was knocked out of his saddle, badly hurt. Mart, less seriously hit, stopped his frightened horse, dismounted under fire, and ran off the attackers singlehandedly.

Life ain't easy for a man named Pink, or so you would think. But if you're talking about Pink Higgins you might look at it another way. There is no record of anybody making fun of Pink Higgins.

John Pinckney Calhoun Higgins - known to friends, enemies, legend and lore as Pink Higgins - grew up in Lampasas County when that part of the country constituted the western frontier, when danger lurked every which way. He learned to rope and ride and be handy with a gun. All three skills, especially the gun part, would come in handy in his adult life. Pink began driving cattle herds north in the mid 1860s until the 1880s when railroads and fences put an end to that particular vocation.

He would later wander north to the Spur Ranch in the Texas Panhandle where he was hired to eliminate cattle rustling on the ranch, a task he carried out with extreme prejudice, as the saying goes.

Pink lived out the rest of his life in Kent County, where he established a farm and ranch that was remarkably free of cattle rustlers. After a time, the Panhandle was free of another Lampasas native, Bill Standifer.

Once, shown a list of the 14 men he is said to have killed, Higgins said, "I didn't kill all of them men - but then again, I got some that wasn't on the bill, so I guess it just about evens up."

Higgins first became known as a gunfighter during the notorious Horrell-Higgins Feud in Lampasas County in the 1870s. The Horrell and Higgins' families were both early settlers of Lampasas County and were close friends for a time, but that time passed, beginning in May of 1876 when Pink found one of his calves tied to a tree on the public square in Lampasas.

Pink hadn't tied the calf there so he set about finding who did. He was told that one Merritt Horrell had sold the calf to Jim Grizzel, a relative of the Horrells and owner of a meat market on the square. Higgins had a warrant sworn out for Merritt Howell but a jury would find him not guilty. Higgins lost faith in juries at that point and assured Horrell that a repeat of the incident would not require the services of a jury.

That turned out to be the case in January of 1877 when some of Higgins' cattle ended up in Horrell's possession. Higgins, along with Bob Mitchell and Sam Hess, took the matter to trial two days later when they walked into the Gem Saloon in downtown Lampasas. Higgins, with his trusty Winchester rifle in tow, filed his opening and closing arguments in the case by shooting Horrell four times. In Higgins mind, this closed out the punishment phase of the trial.

A couple of Horrell brothers and two other men formed a posse and arrested four known Higgins associates, but Pink himself was nowhere to be found.

In March of the 1877, Tom and Mart Horrell were on their way to court for reasons that are unclear but were ambushed along the way at a place on the old Belton Road that would come to be known as Battle Creek.

Captain Sparks and a company of Texas Rangers just happened to be in town at the time. They formed a search party for the men responsible for the ambush, but little came of it.

Later, Pink Higgins surrendered to stand trial for the murder of Merritt Howell. This was seen as a bright spot in what had become a bloody and spreading feud. The Lampasas Dispatch noted "we are all civil now, nobody having been killed in a week or more." (Higgins would later be acquitted of the murder charge.)

In June of 1877 somebody - no idea who - broke into the Lampasas County Courthouse. Every scrap of paper pertaining to various charges against the feudists simply disappeared.

Not so with the Higgins and Horrells factions. Each had the misfortune to be in town at the same time on Sunday, June 11. The ensuing gun battle in downtown Lampasas left two people dead. The Horrell faction ended up in a nigh impenetrable rock building on the west side of the square. Cooler heads, along with the Texas Rangers, persuaded both factions to call it quits for a day.

A detachment of Rangers later surprised the Horrells while they were sleeping and arrested them. Even so, no one was looking forward to another court date, when Pink Higgins and his bunch would know exactly where the Horrells would be and at what time they would be there.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the saga was the way it ended. Both sides signed papers agreeing to end the bloodshed. More remarkably, both sides kept their respective ends of the deal.

Truth be told, the feud officially ended the next year when Tom and Mart Horrell, suspected of complicity in the murder of a storekeeper in Bosque County, were shot to death by vigilantes in the Meridian jail. Although never proven, it was speculated that John Higgins instigated the murders. John Higgins was viewed as a hero locally, and is often credited with bringing down the Horrell Brothers.

Higgins made his way to the Spur Ranch in the Texas Panhandle where, for a time, he partnered with Jefferson Davis Hardin, the younger brother of John Wesley Hardin, as a stock detective, or protection man as they were known. (The younger Hardin would later carry on a family tradition of getting shot to death.) He developed a considerable reputation as a gunman, and in September, 1877, Higgins killed cowboy Ike Lantier, whom he caught stealing cattle, after Lantier drew on him. That shooting was ruled self defense.

In the Panhandle, Higgins ran afoul of Bill Standifer, another range detective who was likewise pretty handy with a gun. Standifer, a Lampasas County native like Higgins, might have been connected to the Horrell clan through his stepmother.

On October 4, 1903, he killed gunman and former lawman Bill Standifer in a gunfight, after Standifer had threatened Higgins son Cullin, a local district attorney. The two men had a falling out that proved to be fatal when they rode up on each other, both armed, and Higgins shot Standifer to death. That killing closed out the most violent part of Pink Higgins life.

Sam Horrell, the only Horrell left, moved his family to Oregon in 1882. He died in California in 1936. Higgins died on December 18, 1914. At the time of his death, Higgins is believed to have killed fourteen men in gunfights. he died of a heart attack at either the age of 52 or 55, depending on which source you believe. Pink Higgins' two sons grew up to be respected lawyers.

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